MOSCOW, Aug. 14 — A bomb set along railroad tracks exploded and derailed a passenger train Monday night between Moscow and St. Petersburg, wounding scores of passengers and shutting down service on one of Russia’s busiest rail lines.
No one was killed, but at least six people were seriously wounded, and the authorities suggested that passengers had been spared in part by luck.
The bomb exploded as the train was traveling near a section of track that crosses a bridge 60 feet above a road, but the train cleared the bridge before it derailed, and the cars slid onto their sides without falling down the slope or onto the road below.
At least 60 of the more than 230 people on board the train were wounded, the authorities said. One railway official said on national television that 90 people had been treated.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but the authorities were treating it as a probable act of terrorism. By nightfall on Tuesday, investigators had made composite sketches of two men seen near the tracks before the blast.
The authorities described the bomb as a homemade device that weighed nearly five pounds, but released few other details because of their investigation.
There were conflicting reports about how the bomb was detonated. One Russian official said it was detonated by a spotter using a wire; another said the bomb exploded when the train made contact with it.
Russia has suffered many terrorist attacks since the mid-1990s, often by Chechen separatists and Islamic militants from other regions in the Caucasus who have links to them.
The acts have included train and airplane bombings, suicide bombings and mass hostage-taking, including in a hospital, a theater and a school. But the attacks have declined in frequency and scale since late 2004, mirroring a general reduction in the pace and intensity of guerrilla fighting in Russia’s southwest.
Fighting has simmered again in recent weeks, however, as it often does in the summer. Russia has been conducting military sweep operations in Ingushetia, adjacent to Chechnya, and taking casualties almost every day.
Web sites with connections to the separatists posted news accounts of the bombing, but did not issue statements from the separatists.
The authorities said counterterrorist measures would be strengthened before parliamentary elections scheduled for late this year and the presidential election next spring.
“The threat of extremism and terrorism has not been completely eliminated,” Nikolai P. Patrushev, the director of the domestic intelligence agency, said Tuesday at a meeting of the National Antiterrorist Committee, according to the Interfax news agency.
The derailment occurred near Malaya Vishera in the Novgorod region, about 100 miles southeast of St. Petersburg. Roughly half a mile of track was damaged, and service was stopped in both directions.
Passengers and relatives crowded the Leningradsky Station in Moscow on Tuesday, waiting for service to resume.
One woman at the station, who declined to give her name, said she had no doubt that the bombing was a terrorist attack. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, “plane or train, they are all dangerous these days.”
Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting.
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